Making Things Up
When I was your age- people told me not to make things up.“ ~ Neil Gaiman, author
I used to daydream in math class and stories would fly in from the window I was looking out of and into my head and I’d have to write them down- then and there.
But you can’t write stories in math class or science class or language class or social studies. Stories written during my grade school years were seized and thrown away.
Understandably, there is a time and place for everything but when it came to writing stories…there was never a time. Well, until
4th grade.
Sometimes I hear the question: "Who was your favorite teacher growing up? ”
It’s interesting to think that a person who you spend just moments of your lifetime with can have such a powerful influence. My 4th grade teacher did three things; he made me love history and geography AND he never threw away my stories. Actually, he did the opposite. He set aside time for us to write and sometimes he’d read our stories aloud and seemed to be just as excited about writing as I was. He called this beautiful hour Creative Writing and for one whole school year I had something to look forward to each week.
When you’re 9, much of your fiction writing work tends to be very obviously gleaned from other writers. That year, I wrote a series called, The Lisa Anderson Mysteries about a girl who solves mysteries on her farm. It was Little House meets Willy Wonka meets Boxcar Children meets Nancy Drew. And Mr. Myers read the words aloud, my words, with a smile on his face, an inflection in his voice in all the right places. He read it as if it was worth something and because I had this driving need to write, to express myself through writing- it somehow made me feel like I was worth something, too. Don’t misunderstand, I wasn’t writing for anyone but myself. I was writing because it made me feel good. And today, I write to understand how I feel about things and along the way I learn a great deal about myself.
Journaling became very important to me as a kid and still is. Writing stories, songs, poems and prose has helped me through disappointments, break ups and the loss of family and friends. My pen and paper helps me understand myself and where I fit in this great, big world. I can be my bold, scared, passionate, quirky self.
There was so little time in school for anything other than facts. Fiction and imagination weren’t very popular.
I doubt Mr. Myers realizes how important his writing time was to me. I’ll never forget.
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we know and understand, while education embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
Oh, I didn’t say that. Einstein did.
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